ZeaVision inSight Featured Article

Ted Williams...A Man Before His Time? Jack Yager, O.D.

September is sports vision month and as a member of ZeaVision’s Advisory Board and former college athlete, it is my pleasure to share insights regarding the relationship between nutrition and vision related to sports performance.

There are many stories that surround Ted Williams, the last major leaguer to record a batting average over 400 for an entire season.  Ted was very focused on his vision and in fact attempted to maintain high visual acuity in a variety of ways.  Whatever his methods, Ted Williams demonstrated excellent eyesight.    Did he perhaps have a diet that contained high levels of certain nutrients?

Visual performance has always been an important issue in any professional sport where a small edge can translate into large gains (e.g. Hitzeman & Beckerman, 1993). This is particularly true in baseball.

When considering overall visual aspects, such things as glare discomfort, glare disability, photo stress recovery, chromatic contrast sensitivity, visual range, and temporal processing speed are all likely to be important to baseball players.  Rowe et. al. found that the dynamic visual acuity of college baseball players was an average of about fifteen percent better than a matched control group of college students.  Classe et. al. found a relationship between visual reaction time and  baseball hitting skills.

The idea that nutrition can improve performance has recently come to the forefront.  One dietary factor that has been shown empirically to improve contrast, glare disability, photo stress recovery, visibility, and temporal processing are the carotenoids, lutein and zeaxanthin.  These ingredients contained in kale, spinach, and brightly colored fruits and vegetables, are found in the highest levels in the “macula” area of the eye and central nervous system tissues.  Renzi & Hammond, 2010, found that lutein and zeaxanthin may improve neural efficiency and visual processing speeds.

Batters trying to hit a ninety five MPH fast ball have one hundred msecs to decide whether to swing or not.  Even a fifteen percent faster neural processing speed could slow the perceived baseball speed to just over eighty miles per hour.  This is a tremendous advantage for a hitter and might well have been one of Ted Williams’ unknown secrets.

The highest concentrations of lutein and zeaxanthin in the eye are in the macula.  It is thought that these two carotenoids act as a filter for the macula, which not only reduces glare disability and discomfort, but also increases photo stress recovery time and improves contrast.  Playing ball on a day with a perfectly clear sky and no clouds, a player can lose a fly ball very easily.  The earth’s atmosphere contains small particles from both nature and manmade sources which results in a bluish veiling luminance.  This bluish veiling makes it very difficult to follow a baseball high in the sky, unless a yellow filter or sunglass is utilized.

Throughout the history of baseball there have been many attempts to reduce disability glare.  This includes baseball caps, sunglasses and special glove designs using the webbing of the ball glove to block the glare from the sun.  The addition of carotenoids to the diet might well be a simple performance enhancer not previously considered.

To review abstracts of the cited articles and new novel posters please visit www.zeavision.com/research.html, and the www.EyePromise.com website.